After a Bishop was stabbed during a church service, Australian authorities and the media set their sights on Elon Musk, demonising him as “dangerous,” “reckless,” and “egotistical” for allowing footage of the attack to be shared on his social media platform, X.
At the time, the Australian Prime Minister described Musk as an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law.”
Other MPs vowed to “defend the Australian people” and uphold “public safety” by pressuring Musk to censor what the Australian government said would “sow division.”
One Australian senator went so far as to say that Musk “should be in jail, and the key be thrown away.”
In the UK, following the recent stabbing of 11 children and the subsequent unrest that followed, Musk is now public enemy number one – again.
The UK Prime Minister has reportedly said that Musk will “face the full force of the law” for his commentary on recent events, such as the arrests and lengthy jail sentences of citizens who published “misinformation” and “racial hate” online.
Musk has long been a vocal advocate of “free speech,” which the authorities apparently deem a threat to public safety. So, I suppose a good question is, was there ever a time in history when the good guys in power censored and regulated speech? Is that a road we should be heading down?
John Stuart Mill once said,
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Of course, there is misinformation online — and offline, for that matter. There always has been. There always will be. But the best antidote to misinformation isn’t censorship. That only raises suspicions. The best antidote is information.
Lies are exposed by the truth – just as light dispels the darkness. But if you want to assault the truth, lies are a weak weapon, because when the lie is uncovered, credibility is undermined.
Unfortunately, for those in power, the temptation is just to throw a blanket over it and pretend it isn’t there. But that tactic will never cultivate public trust. In fact, it’ll have the exact opposite effect.
When those with power censor speech or bar debate, conspiracy theories are sure to abound. Why do people subscribe to alternative narratives? Because they don’t believe what they’re being told. That’s because they don’t trust the person speaking, the things said are demonstrably untrue, or else they’re not allowed to be questioned.
It’s natural for people to want to make sense of the world. Especially during chaotic times. But when the government begins fighting for a particular narrative by silencing or threatening alternatives, they’ll soon find public suspicions at an all-time high.
The reason for this is simple. Most people believe that lies are fought with truth, but the truth is fought with censorship.
